Peninsula plans new ventures to beat slowdown

The company has already forayed into many property-related areas, such as facility management, special economic zones and hospitality. PLL has nearly 40 million sq ft under development in the residential, commercial and retail verticals.

"We are closely looking at many opportunities and options to enter into. Over the next five years, we will have new verticals such as project management, infrastructure, private equity alongwith existing verticals," said a source. Managing Director Rajesh Jaggi could not be contacted for comments.

In May, PLL announced its foray into the hospitality sector in a joint venture with textile maker and real estate developer Arrow Webtex to develop business hotels across the country. The group has reentered the business after it exited the retail business, Pyramid Retail, in December 2007, by selling it to Indiabulls group for Rs 208 crore.

According to the company's website, Peninsula's facility management division manages over 2.1 million sq ft of real estate and plans to acquire facility management business of an additional 10 million sq ft by 2009. Peninsula has also entered the private equity business by launching domestic and international funds. The Ashok Piramal group is into textiles, engineering and electronics, entertainment apart from real estate development.

A host of real estate companies, such as Unitech, DLF, Parsvanath Developers, Housing Development Infrastructure (HDIL), have either entered or entering newer businesses like telecom, insurance, asset management, entertainment, power, oil and gas exploration, construction business to augment their revenues and beat the slump in the real estate market, where transactions have gone down by 20-25 per cent in the last six months.